The need for skilled manpower in industries and on factory floors has become a phenomenon that is raising concern among industries globally. In a study by EY, it was found that as many as 2.1 million jobs could go unfilled by 2030 if the skill gap is not addressed.
Industries are constantly looking for solutions that not only deliver training effectively, but also keep the workers sufficiently motivated or incentivized to achieve the desired learning outcomes.
VR for Industrial Skill Training
VR as a training tool has been gaining considerable acceptance, but it is still widely seen as having applications for soft skills or in areas like procedural training, where the lessons involve following a list of SOPs or meeting a set of compliance requirements, etc for a given scenario on the screen.
The real potential of VR, where it can make a significant difference to the quality of learning, lies in training for hard skills or technical skills like welding or spray painting, where precise hand movements are critical and even a small variation in technique directly impacts the quality of the final output.
In industrial training centers or technical colleges where training for such skills are provided, the practical part of the training is often limited and theoretical portion remains more, since there is a high cost of raw materials and consumables involved. Consequently, learners come out inadequately equipped to meet the challenges arising in real-world shop floors, resulting in losses due to rejections and wastage, and industries incur costs and time for retraining them to bring their skills on par with the requirements.
The advantages of training through virtual and mixed reality
Tech interventions like VR and MR are an excellent way to meet these challenges, since they offer the potential to practice for unlimited time with no repeated cost of material. The time involved is also drastically reduced since it avoids unproductive time like waiting for metal to cool, discarding and reloading new metal plates, and time taken for surface preparation before each practice session. It makes training completely sustainable, eliminating huge amounts of wastage during repeated practice and offering a cleaner, safer alternative with no exposure to sparks, fumes, etc.
Students also practice with more confidence right from the start, since they can work without any fear or risk. This makes it possible to train more students and have more practice sessions in the same span of time, as compared to conventional learning.
Focused training through precise evaluation
The other major advantage of VR-based training is the accurate measurement and evaluation of the learners’ skills, which is not possible in legacy learning methods where visual inspection is the only means of assessment.
When VR is executed correctly with a focus on the physics of the skill, it enables the ability to track every single hand movement of the learner precisely. The learner’s performance is measured across multiple different parameters, each of which has a bearing on the final output quality. It becomes possible to identify the exact areas of strength and weakness of the learner, and provide data-driven, personalized learning that is tuned to each of their needs. Thus, it shifts the entire paradigm of learning from generic, standardized instruction to learner-focused intervention.
VR for replicating special scenarios
One of the key advantages of VR is that it can replicate or recreate complex scenarios that will arise in real-life work situations but are risky for early learners to practice. Instances like welding or painting at the top of skyscrapers, oil rigs, for example, can be replicated to give the user a highly realistic feeling, without any of the risks involved.
Industries can recreate complex or customized workpieces like gas tanks or locomotive coaches, or for instance, a conveyor belt – it will prove extremely costly and affect production if a factory has to allocate a conveyor for training, but with VR, the system can create any workpiece to be moved along a conveyor, control the pause times at each station, etc.
As and when new product lines are to be introduced, the existing workers can be trained on the proposed models ahead of time, and ensure their skill sets are aligned even before actual production starts.
With its numerous benefits, VR clearly stands out as the learning medium for the workforce of the future. Adaptive, flexible, and scalable, it is the ideal solution that can drive the learning needs of any organization and power its growth in a rapidly changing world.
